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Think again A children’s book about a lion raised by two men has been banned in Florida because right-wing activists suspect the men might be gay – despite nothing in the book suggesting they have any romantic relationship, according to a report. The Florida Department of Education released new information about books that were banned or temporarily removed pending investigation in various county school systems as part of the state’s new laws making it easier to challenge material in a school library, reported the Tallahassee Democrat. One of the books was “Christian, the Hugging Lion.” According to the report, schools in Manatee County, a conservative community just south of Tampa, withdrew the book that’s based on the true story about a pair of men who raise a lion in their London apartment, then are lovingly remembered by the animal when they go to Africa to see him years later. Nothing in the book indicates the two men are in a same-sex relationship — but activists speculated that they might be, which was enough for a complaint about the book.
After four years of frontline reporting and research, The Grayzone’s Anya Parampil unveils her forthcoming book, Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire. Based on four years of original investigative work and interviews with diplomats from across the globe, Corporate Coup uses the case of Venezuela to examine the West’s blueprint for modern regime change war: the hybrid diplomatic assaults, economic terrorism, covert destabilization tactics, and information warfare that the US and its allies unleash against all governments […]
The post Announcing ‘Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire’ by Anya Parampil first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post Announcing ‘Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire’ by Anya Parampil appeared first on The Grayzone.
The looming impeachment has a grander purpose Noah Berlatsky writes: Republicans have openly admitted that their efforts to impeach President Joe Biden — which will begin in earnest this week as House members return to DC from summer break — are in bad faith. They don’t just want to tarnish Biden. They want to tarnish the impeachment process itself. As the GOP has become increasingly authoritarian and anti-democracy, Republicans have become increasingly committed to undermining and mocking forms of democratic accountability. A nakedly partisan and clownish impeachment is useful because it signals to voters that all impeachments are clown shows, and all impeachments are partisan. That exculpates former President Donald Trump and delegitimizes resistance to him should he win the presidency again. It’s absolutely the case that they are doing this for Trump because he has demanded it. That goes without saying. But since they are all bent on destroying democracy and the constitutional order, de-legitimizing the impeachment process is a no brainer.
Doctor Who: Redacted, the podcast whose heroines are a trio of LGBTQ women, returns to BBC Sounds for new adventures on September 18th.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Osama Bin Laden was not a good man.
Great is not a synonym for good. Genghis Khan was a great man. Hitler was a great man. FDR was a great man. Ivan the Terrible was a great man. Queen Elizabeth the first was a great woman. Of the five, only FDR was a good person.
Bin Laden didn’t quite win (though the jury is out), but he did accomplish much of what he wanted. His theory was simple: the US, the far enemy, was why when pious Muslims tried to reform their societies, they lost. The US supported the local governments or conservative/sell out forces, and with that support, the governments won.
This theory is a good one: it’s mostly true.
How a soft-bodied machine uses physical intelligence to navigate.
The post The Wisdom of a Brainless Robot appeared first on Nautilus.
I've posted a couple of new animated cartoons about microwaves, cuddling, and wombats.
View on my websiteSTEVE HILTON (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): I mean, of course it’s laughable, the Biden aspect. Almost everything with Biden is laughable. But it’s really serious, it’s really infuriating, Harris. Because we never had what I and many others called for, which is a completely objective, independent assessment of the COVID policies that were implemented to see what worked and didn’t. We never had that. And so as a result we are now back to these absurd, preposterous kind of witchcraft and voodoo masquerading as public health from these tin-pot fascists and their authoritarianism, exactly as Rand Paul was talking about. We have to resist this. We have to resist it at every level, as J.D. Vance is doing at the federal level, we have to resist this at the state level, the local level, the individual level. We cannot let them go back to this madness. Here’s more: Uhm, toddlers can have total hysterics when you try to put their pants on or wash their hands. They’re toddlers. So are these right wingers who are still having tantrums over wearing masks. And they are wrong about the efficacy of wearing them.
Nearly all of the G.O.P. contenders immediately agreed to sign the pledge.
Trump “memorializes” 9/11 He is currently in business with Saudi Arabia’s LIV golf, happy to whitewash their past as he did when he proclaimed MBS innocent of ordering the death and dismemberment of Jamaal Kashoggi. His first trip as president was to genuflect to their king. And his son-in-law delivered so much to the Saudi government while he was in the White House that they gave him 2 billion dollars in thanks immediately upon leaving office. Also this, when he called in to a radio station on the morning of 9/11 and bragged about how he now had the tallest building in Manhattan, which was, naturally, a lie: “I mean, 40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan. And it was actually – before the World Trade Center – was the tallest. And then when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second-tallest, and now it’s the tallest.” As multiple fact checks later pointed out, this was not true. The Wall Street building had not been the tallest building in lower Manhattan in the 1970s, when the Twin Towers were constructed, nor was it the tallest in the area after 2001.
When the Cold War ended in 1991, the West, and particularly the United States, found itself at a fork in the road. One road led to peace, justice, cooperation, nuclear disarmament, a revitalised UN, inclusiveness, pluralism, human rights, multilateralism, fair trade, regulated markets, food security, energy transition, sustainability, and humane governance. The other road led Continue reading »
I have come now to the bitter realisation that from no matter what angle you consider it, the Henoko New Base plan has become a ‘solid block of injustice.’” – Urashima Etsuko Paid little attention either elsewhere in Japan or in countries closely tied to Japan such as Australia, a huge and grossly unequal struggle Continue reading »
It may be too late for supporters of the Yes cause at the referendum to retrieve their initially majority support among the population. Perhaps people have made up their minds and are unlikely to go 180 degrees again. But if there is a strategy and a tactic which could win the case, it could be Continue reading »
At end July 2023, there was an all-time record 2.554 million temporary entrants in Australia. The crucial policy question is whether that will be a peak or whether the number of temporary entrants in Australia will keep rising? If the latter, what will that mean for the number of temporary entrants in ‘immigration limbo’ – Continue reading »
Marise Payne’s tenure as Australia’s Foreign Minister was rightly marked with criticism. Australia’s international and strategic interests went backwards during her time. But was she really Australia’s worst Foreign Minister as some commentators assert? It’s important to consider the root cause of the damage done to Australia’s national interests: the belligerent interference and harm done Continue reading »
Current articles on the government’s climate policies increasingly use words such as reckless, hypocrisy and betrayal referring to approval of coal mines. But it is even more difficult to find words to describe the gas industry’s infliction of pain on humanity by the approval of gas mines. It is a shock to many that coalmine Continue reading »
Australia Post’s $200.3 million loss for 2022-23 is only the second in its corporate history. It also confirms that, with Christine Holgate gone, Australia Post is once again being set up to fail to justify removing its community service obligation and possible privatisation. Australians need to pay attention to issues like bank branch closures and Continue reading »
That Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese chose to confirm his visit to China almost two months in advance after his “frank and constructive” meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Jakarta last week shows his earnestness to further improve Sino-Australian relations. Albanese told the media after his Continue reading »
The message is clear: Try to spread opinions cops don’t like through the media, and you might be charged next.
The post Cop City Indictments Threaten Press Freedom Too appeared first on The Intercept.
In my latest article (open access) for Environment and Planning F I explore Latin American contributions to the debates surrounding the concept ‘mode of production’ (MOP). I specifically explore the contributions of José Carlos Mariátegui and René Zavaleta as two of the continent’s most original Marxist thinkers.
The post Debating Modes of Production in Latin America appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
They weren’t all human
Today, Chileans mark the 50th anniversary of the bloody US-backed military coup d’état that killed President Salvador Allende, putting an end to democratic rule and unleashing a systematic reign of terror to crush thousands of supporters of the socialist government in Chile. That day and the seventeen years that followed saw our loved ones brutally […]